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Reform, Repression and Unrest at the Inns of Court, 1518–1558

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

R. M. Fisher
R. M. Fisher
Affiliation:
University of Queensland
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Extract

In 1546 the members of Lincoln's Inn beheld a most peculiar sight in their communal hall. The traditional midsummer light of St John had been replaced with the ridiculous head of a horse. Three young members were charged by the benchers. Two who refused to confess were expelled from the house and imprisoned in the Fleet by the lord chancellor, Thomas Wriothesley, and Sir Roger Cholmley, the chief baron of the Exchequer and a former bencher. The other culprit, who confessed and made humble suit to the bench, was merely excluded from commons. After the inevitable petitions, all were forgiven ‘their said lewd and nowghtie mysdemeanours’ and shortly remitted into the house.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 20 , Issue 4 , December 1977 , pp. 783 - 801
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

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References

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52 For comparative purposes, the membership figures below have been tabulated from a privy council census dated May 1574 (P.R.O. SP 12/95, fo. 201); cf. Sir Edward Coke's estimate for the early seventeenth century of at least 20 benchers, about 60 barristers and 160–180 gentlemen at each Inn (Prest, , Inns of Court, p. 47):Google Scholar

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57 Green's friends of the Middle Temple who have not been otherwise identified were [Robert] Bowyer, [Bartram] Calthorp, ‘Master Cotton', [Francis] Farnham and [Thomas or William] Hussey. They were evidently admitted during the period of the missing minute book.

58 E.g. Dickens, , English Reformation (rev. edn London, 1967), p. 137Google Scholar, and Prest, , Inns of Court, p. 218.Google Scholar

59 In my thesis, pp. 157–99.

60 L.I.B.B. IV, 121V (Baildon 1, 255).